


Waiting on Forever

by rinskiroo



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bar/Pub, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Cat BB-8, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Friends to Lovers, Leather & Lace 2018, Minor Finn/Rose Tico, Romance, Tropes, can it be slow burn if it's only 7 chapters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-19
Packaged: 2019-03-17 13:43:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13660200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rinskiroo/pseuds/rinskiroo
Summary: Poe Dameron is an Air Force pilot on temporary assignment to England.  Rey owns a pub in a sleepy little village.  His first day in country, Poe gets lost on those narrow English roads and finds Rey's pub during a winter storm.  Poe thinks she's amazing, but he's only here for a few months--no time for romance.  Rey thinks he's handsome, but she's not about to spend her time waiting on some flaky flyboy.A Damerey Modern AU filled with romantic tropes for Leather & Lace 2018.





	1. "Bedsharing"

When Poe Dameron, hot shot fighter pilot, terror with two wings, grey angel of precision destruction, was told he’d be doing some NATO relationship building via an international squadron in jolly ol’ England, he imagined something much different.  Sure, it was winter, but in his head he still thought of rolling hills, rain, pubs with hearty food and pints, and rowdy fans watching “football” on TV.  He did not think of dangerously narrow roads with absolutely no street lights, road signs that were few and far between (and even then, tucked behind old stone and thatch buildings ridiculously close to the road), or the icy rain pelting his tiny rental car.

Not to mention his phone didn’t appear to easily want to join the British network despite the AT&T employee _insisting_ he was “good to go.”  With the dark and the freezing rain and the most unhelpful GPS, Poe was fairly certain he was lost.

It was luck, then, when he came over the next hill and spotted a cluster of lights.  He happened upon a small (very small) village which, as he drove down the main road past a cluster of buildings, he then drove out of.  Finding a fenced off dirt pathway that led down to some sort of farm to turn around at, he went back through the town and parked in the also very small parking lot for quaint looking pub.  A light flickering in the cold rain illuminated a hanging sign calling it the “Rose and Crown” with a picture of, yep, a rose and a crown.

Poe stomped his boots on the mat just over the threshold and shook the rain off his coat before hanging it on one of provided hooks.  It was cozy inside—dated furniture, but clean and well kept.  An old, boxy TV mounted in the corner played some British evening drama.  It smelled divine though, like roasting potatoes and beef stew.  It was also surprisingly empty.  Given the fact that he had accidentally driven straight through the town before he realized it, he expected a small turn out, but not zero.

A woman with brown hair popped out from what Poe guessed was the door to the kitchen looking rather surprised as well.  “Oh.  Hello!”  She sounded rather cheery in her cute British accent.  As Poe walked further into the pub towards the bar, he realized she looked rather cute as well with her hair pulled back into two small buns behind her head and her large, toothy smile that made her eyes all crinkly.

“Sorry, I don’t get many visitors this time of night,”  she said as she brought up a rag and wiped down the bar before he sat down.

“What time is it?”  Poe asked as he slid onto the barstool.

She gave him a sideways glance and chuckled.  “Nearly eight.”

“Must still be a little jet-lagged.”  He smiled at her.  Getting lost in the British countryside wasn’t so bad if this was what he had found.

“Just flew in from the States?  Business or holiday?”

“Business—I was supposed to be at Brize Norton.  Do you know where that is?  Is it around here?”

“Brize Norton?”  The woman laughed again, larger this time at his now obvious mistake.  “I have no idea how you got all the way out here if you’re trying to get to Brize Norton.”

Poe shook his head and chuckled and pulled out his traitorous phone.  “This thing,”  he said shaking it before depositing it on the bar.  “I should have just bought a paper map.  Do you have a menu or anything?  I’m starving.”

“Nope,”  she shook her head, but pulled out a napkin and silverware and placed them in front of him.  “I’ve got some of today’s soup—beef stew—left.  I can bake you a potato, or I’ve got some leftover curry I can reheat.  I can do fish and chips, too, but you’ll have to wait for the fryer to get hot again.  There’s an apple tart if you just want dessert.”

“Beef stew sounds great—smells great, too.”

When the girl left, an orange tabby with white paws hopped up onto the bar.  She purred and turned in a circle before plopping down on her haunches in front of him.

“Oh.  Hi there,”  Poe said, holding out his hand for the cat.

The tabby rubbed her face vigorously on his hand, turning her body all the way around so he would pet her.  Never one to deny a friendly critter, Poe gave her all the head rubs and chin scratches she wanted.

“Bee, get _down_.”  Rey pushed the cat away with one hand and set a bowl down in front of him with the other.  She picked up the cat and carried her off somewhere else before returning with a hunk of bread to go with the stew.  “Sorry about that.”

“Friendly thing you got there.”

Her eyes rolled as she nodded.  “Found him scavenging the bins out back.  Never feed a stray—they own you after that.  You want a pint?  I’ve got beer, cider…”

Poe chuckled, but turned down the offer of a pint and took a glass of water instead as he still intended to go back out into the dark, icy night and try to find the place he was supposed to be.  She went off to finish cleaning up and left him to enjoy his meal in relative silence with just the TV droning on and the ice pelting the windows in the background.

On the wall next to the bar were a collection of photos and newspaper clippings—most about the bar itself and the town.  The photos were largely of funny looking men with big noses and foreheads—one was a picture of a very large man clutching the hand of a sour looking girl with her hair tied into three buns.

“That your dad?”  Poe asked once the woman had come around again.

When she sneered, Poe quickly felt the error of his assumption.  “No, that’s Plutt.  He used to own this pub.  But he died, so it’s mine now.”

“And the others?”

“That’s the Irving Boys, they had this place before Plutt and ran it into the ground.  And that’s Ducain, he picked it up at auction after the guy that owned it just up and disappeared one day.”

“Is this place bad luck?”

She shrugged.  “Story of most pubs, I think.”

“Well, that was the best stew I’ve ever had.  People should come from all over just to eat that.  I’ll take some of that apple tart, if that’s all right?”

She gave a small, embarrassed laugh at the compliment and nodded.  While she went into the back to fetch the dessert, Poe stood and went to get a closer look at the pictures and articles on the wall.  From what Poe could discern from the clippings, this had once been a large farming community, and then parts of the farm were converted to a factory to make bullets for the war.  After the war was over, the factory shut down and the town had dwindled since then.  The caption of the photo with Plutt and the girl with the buns mentioned them simply as “owner of the newly refurnished Rose and Crown with his ward, Rey.”

“Coffee?”  she asked as she set the plate on the bar with a clink.

“Yeah, sounds great.”  Poe sat back down on the barstool to enjoy his dessert.  He grinned when she poured a second cup and sat down next to him with her own plate.

“So, tell me about yourself, Yank-come-to-Brize-Norton.  Do you have a name?  What sort of business are you in?”  she asked him between bites of the tart and sips of coffee.

Poe laughed.  “First of all—I’m from Florida, so _not_ a yank.”

She shrugged and grinned, seemed it was all the same from her British point of view.

“And I’m a pilot.  Poe Dameron.”  He wiped his hand on his napkin and held it out to her.

“A pilot?”  she asked, her eyes widening in both surprise and glee.  “Oh, that’s brilliant!  What do you fly?  Like a big airbus or a Cessna?”

“F-15.”

“A _fighter_ pilot?  Get out.”  With another laugh she seemed to realize that she had just left his hand hanging out waiting for her to introduce herself.  Blushing slightly, she took his hand.  “I’m Rey.”

“I know.”  When she quirked an eyebrow at him, wondering just how he knew that, he jerked his head towards the wall of photos.  “You were a cute kid.”

“Thanks,”  she said, awkwardly, but she was quick to not let the conversation linger on the people in those photos.  “I want to hear all about flying a fighter jet.  Tell me literally everything.”

And he did.  If there was one thing Poe could do, it was talk about flying to anyone who would listen.  Rey hung on every word, every crazy story.  He told about young and dumb flight school pranks, long nights spent waiting for the order to go that would end in standing down.  Those were the good days, even if he did prefer to be in the cockpit.  Poe didn't’ tell her about the bad days.  Those stories were too heavy for a first meeting.

They polished off the rest of the apple tart and the pot of coffee and Poe yawned and stretched and realized he really needed to get moving.  They’d really be wondering what had happened to him if he missed the morning briefing, and he was sure he’d never hear the end of how he got lost.

“You got a map or something?”  he asked as he stood up.

“Yeah.”  Rey dug around in a drawer full of various junk and pulled out a badly folded paper map.  “It’s a bit dated, but roads don’t change too much around here.  This area—”  She pulled out a pen and circled a major road junction.  “—is under construction so you’ll need to go around—”  Another stroke of the pen indicating a better route.  “—shouldn’t be too bad this late, but I’d avoid that area all together when it’s daytime to be honest.”

“Thanks,”  he said as he took the map and stared down at it.  “For staying open, and the food and company.  Can you, uh, mark where we are?  In case I want to come back and try something else on the menu?”

Not the smoothest line he’d ever delivered, but she chuckled and circled the tiny dot that marked the village.  Then she wrote her phone number in the corner of the map.  “For when you get a British phone.”

“Thanks.  Again.”  It was a bit of an awkward goodbye with a slight wave and soft handshake as he walked towards the door.  As Poe grabbed his coat off the hook however, he saw that the weather outside had taken a decidedly severe turn.  When he pulled the door open, he was greeted by nearly a foot of packed, crunchy snow.

“Oh, that’s rather nasty,”  Rey said from behind him.  “I wouldn’t drive in that, if I were you.  They don’t normally salt the roads out here.”

Poe frowned.  He didn’t want to be late for the first day of his new assignment, but he also didn’t want to slide off one of these narrow roads into a snow-filled ditch.  “Don’t suppose this town has a motel or something?”

“Once upon a time, this was it, but now it’s just a pub.”

“Well, can I pull up a corner of floor in this lovely pub?  And probably call my CO and let her know I’m not AWOL.”  Poe pushed the door shut, keeping the cold firmly outside and replaced his coat on the hook.  “I promise I’m not an axe murderer.”

“Well, since you _promised_.”  She grinned, not looking the least bit nervous to have a stranger stay overnight in what was her home.  “But you should probably know that I teach a self-defense course during the week.”

Poe felt something kick off in his stomach.  Definitely wasn’t the gurgling of slowly digesting beef cubes and carrots and apple tart.  “I’ll keep my hands to myself.”  But then, he kind of hoped he wouldn’t have to.

She smirked over her shoulder at him as she walked away to fetch the phone.  It was a quick call—just confirming he had landed and didn’t die somewhere between Norfolk and Heathrow.  He’d be late for the meet and greet, but would be out as soon as the roads were clear.

“Not sure how many extra blankets I have, but—well, shit.”  There was a hum of power draining from the lights and other electronics in the building that preceded her profanity.  She shuffled around in the dark, knocking things to the floor until she found a flashlight and clicked it on.  “Hopefully, it’ll just… kick back on.”

They stood around for a minute, waiting, but nothing happened.

Poe wondered if the building had undergone any modernization lately to combat the draftiness of the old construction.  When, after five minutes of still no power, Rey started grumbling about having to sleep downstairs in front of the fireplace, Poe figured that no, it had not.

Rey found him another flashlight, which she called a “torch” that Poe found rather silly and laughed about.  He could practically feel her rolling her eyes at him.  Then, she led him upstairs to help find the air mattress with the battery pump and extra blankets.

“There is… a lot of stuff here.”  He didn’t mean to pry, really, but poked his head into the several rooms that were above the pub.  Almost all were jammed full of boxes and bags stuffed to overflowing with other random junk shoved in.  He thought he saw Bee the cat hop from one stack of boxes to the next, but she disappeared into the dark.

There was a sort of wistful sigh from ahead of him.  “Plutt was a hoarder, but also a thief and a swindler.  I should just throw it all away, but I always wonder if someone will come back for it.”

“Haven’t you ever seen those shows where they find treasure in abandoned storage lockers?  Maybe there’s a first edition Hemingway in here you could sell on ebay.”

“Maybe,”  she said thoughtfully after a long, quiet second.

“What was this Plutt guy to you?”  There was another long pause and then a grunt as she hefted up the box with the air mattress.  Poe quickly moved to take the burden from her and then stood still as she piled a couple pillows on top.  “Sorry.  That’s probably not my business.”

Back downstairs, they pushed a few tables and chairs out of the way and set up the mattress and the nest of blankets and pillows in front of the fireplace in silence.  Poe found a couple fresh logs next to the hearth and tossed them into the fire, making sure it stayed well fed for their night without modern heating.  When they were done, they sat near each other, not really close, and drank cider from mugs.  On the house, Rey insisted, because the register was down.

“My parents left me with Plutt when I was a kid.  I suppose I’m like all that junk I keep—waiting for them to come back and claim me.”

Poe didn’t know what to say to such a disclosure except,  “I’m sorry, Rey.”  He did feel sorry for her because she sounded awfully sad about it.  It likely wasn’t something she really wanted to talk about either because they were two drinks in before the abrupt admission.  But maybe she did want to talk to someone because he hadn’t asked again, didn’t prompt her for more.

“I shouldn’t even want them back, right?  Who just leaves a kid with a man like Plutt?”

Again, Poe didn’t know what to do, so he scooted closer to her and cautiously draped his arm around her shoulders.  “You turned out all right.  Fixed this pub up nice.  You teach—I bet those people in your classes look up to you.  I just met you and I think you’re… inspiring.”  It had taken him a second to think of the right word that wasn’t “a total hottie” or “amazing” or “smell really nice.”

She mumbled something that sounded maybe like an embarrassed thank you.  “I’m not a _fighter pilot_.  That sounds way more impressive than local pub owner.”

Poe chuckled and gave her shoulder a squeeze.  “I’ll tell you a secret.  I’m absolute shit at taking care of myself.  I went from my parents’ house, to a college dorm, to the barracks.  When I’m in someplace long enough to warrant actually having a place to stay, I go to one of those motels you can rent by the week.  I eat in the chow hall or the little short order place they have next to the flightline.  I am a _mess_ of a person.”

“Yeah, but… fighter pilot.”  She snickered and jabbed him sharply in the ribs with her finger.

“Okay, okay, you’re right.  My job is way cooler.”  He laughed and man, did he want to kiss her.  It was pretty damn romantic with the fire and all snuggled in the warm blankets, but they had both had a couple drinks and had only just met each other.  Poe wasn’t usually one to hold back, but he didn’t want to ruin it.  He didn’t want it to be a quick tumble with a stranger and then the awkward exit in the morning.  He had come to England for a very specific job, not for—whatever that would be.  A relationship?  He definitely didn’t have time for that.  A fling?  That would be fun, but… Poe wanted to get to know her, enjoy her company, and not have any broken hearts or hurt feelings when he had to go back home at the end of this.

But, she rested her head on his shoulder and they laid back against the pillows curled up underneath a thick coverlet.  They slept quite close together for two strangers-barely-friends.  Poe found the position surprisingly restful, and figured Rey did as well.  When he woke up to the power coming back on and the many machines clicking and humming back to life, she was lightly snoring next to him.  She slept right through it, and he didn’t wake her, just pulled off one of the blankets before it got too warm with the returning heat and snuggled in for a few more hours of sleep.

In the morning, he woke up to the orange tabby on his chest, nuzzling her wet nose into his chin.  She walked in a few circles on his chest and then settled down as if for a nap.  Poe grinned, but plucked the cat off and set her aside so he get get up.  It was only slightly awkward, waking up next to the pretty stranger and cleaning up their comfy little nest, but not at all unpleasant.  The temperature rose above freezing and the snow started to melt.  With the sun peaking out late in the morning, the snow and ice reduced dramatically and Poe didn’t think he’d need to wait for the plow anymore.  A few cars had been seen going back and forth, which Rey insisted was quite busy for that time of day.

“Thanks again,”  he said as he pulled his coat on.

“Anytime, flyboy.”

Poe reached out and pulled her into a tight hug.  He grinned when she returned it just as solidly.  “I’ll text you from my new number.  We should get drinks sometime—in a place where I can pay for them and you’re not serving them.”

Rey laughed and nodded.  “Yeah.  I’ll hold you to it.”


	2. "Fake" Relationship

Rey’s days were full, she insisted.  Morning inventories, preparing food for the lunch rush.  Rush meaning the usual six or so patrons who stopped by for a sandwich and a coffee before heading back out to work.  A couple older ladies would stop by for tea sometime in the afternoon.  They’d share stories about their children and grandchildren living in London or Paris or some other very fancy city.  She’d prepare for the dinner rush.  A couple of families might drop in after a busy day, a few blokes would have a couple pints and watch the telly.  It was not enough to actually be sustainable which was why three days a week she got up extra early to prepare lunches and taught a self-defense class at the council hall in the next (larger) village.

She definitely did not have time to date.  That was her excuse, at least.

Rey met Poe for coffee twice after that unseasonably snowy day in early December.  He was handsome with his curly brown hair and stubble that, while he insisted he shaved every morning as per the regs, always seemed to reappear by lunchtime.  The second time, he had shown up still in his green pilot’s jumpsuit with a little blue cap perched on his head.  Rey had asked him about all of his patches and he had patiently answered all of her questions.

A real gentlemen—something that was hard to find these days.  But then, she hadn’t really been looking either.

Much to Rey’s confusion and disappointment, he disappeared after that.  Vanished for two weeks and didn’t answer any calls or texts.  It was Christmas Eve when he’d sent her a selfie with a red hat and fake beard and apologized for being gone.  Where he had went, he couldn’t tell her.  What he had been doing—he simply texted back little airplane emojis.

It was then that Rey realized it was never going to be serious.  He was here for a few months and then gone—if he was even here.  Sent off to who knows where to do who knew what with no notice.  If he died on one of these clandestine escapades, she’d never know.  When he called her Christmas morning and asked if she wanted to get dinner, she turned him down.

She was too busy, she said.  She didn’t have time for dating.  Maybe another coffee, after the new year.  It was just a madhouse this time of year.  He had been cool about it, though she could hear the disappointment in his voice.  Rey kicked herself over it for a few days—a week, actually.  She felt bad for pulling away, but then was still upset at him for not telling her he was leaving.  At the end of it all, she still missed her new friend.

On New Year’s, he sent her a gif of the New York City ball dropping at midnight (the one from the year before, he sent this year’s gif at midnight NYC time).  Rey laughed as she looked at her phone in the dark and then rolled over and went back to sleep.

**[still friends?]**   He texted her the next morning.

**[of course!]**   She replied, followed by several overly peppy emojis.  **[even if u woke me at 5am with ur dumb yank ball]**

**[hey!]**

Rey giggled at her phone at his continued indignation whenever she used the term “yank.”  It seemed to bother him to no end, so she made sure to use it often.  They continued texting, mostly consisting of whatever silly, new meme he had found and she sent him pictures of food and sometimes Bee doing something ridiculous.  He promised to come by the night she made curry as the special, but got a text from a number she didn’t recognize.

**[Hi, this is Poe’s mate, Finn.  Poe had to jet, but he told me you were making curry.  Can I have his?]**

Rey didn’t reply.  She tucked her phone into the drawer under the bar and got on with her life without flaky flyboys.

He was only gone a week this time and popped by the Rose and Crown just as she was opening for lunch.  Her hair, still wet from a quick shower after her class, was tossed half into a loose bun on top of her head with the rest hanging down.

“Hey there.”  He grinned as he bent down to pet the tabby that had rushed out to meet him.  “Such a good kitty.”

Rey frowned as she packed a couple of take away orders into sacks.  It wasn’t fair her cat liked him so much while she was duly annoyed with him.

“Sorry about the other night,”  he said as he sat down on the barstool.

She shrugged and stapled the sacks closed with the receipt and then tucked them onto a shelf.  She picked up a towel and started drying glasses, trying not to look at him, though she did catch a glance as he sat down.  His hair was disheveled, he had a stain on his shirt, and looked exhausted.  As if he had just rolled out of bed and right into her pub.

“Well, it was quite good.”

Poe drummed his fingers on the bar, perhaps realizing the icy reception he was receiving.  “There’s this thing—it’s like a big party.  My side is putting it on, but there’s gonna be all sorts of people there.  I hear even a _Lord_ is coming.  Didn’t realize you guys still had those.”

“We have a whole House of them,”  she quipped.  “And you’ll be at this party?  Won’t have to jet off at the last minute?”

Poe grinned broadly at the wordplay she hadn’t quite intended, but his smile quickly fell when he realized she was being sardonic.  “That’s my job, Rey.  They tell me I gotta go and I go.”

“I know that.  It would have been nice not to find out second hand.”

“I’m sorry, okay?  Come on, come to this party with me.  We can gorge ourselves on fancy hors d’oeuvres and free champagne.”

She sighed.  Though it sounded awful tempting and he had this sad, tired look in his eyes like he just needed something to go right today, she shook her head and came up with some terrible reasons for why should couldn’t go.  Anything that wasn’t _I_ _’m terrified you’re going to shatter my heart._

“I can’t just close the pub for an evening, Poe.  And fancy party means fancy outfit.  You don’t just spring that on a girl.”

Poe’s shoulders sank and his head drooped, but he forced out a grin anyway as he pushed away from the bar.  “I had to ask.”

“Did you want anything for lunch?”  she asked after him as he started to walk towards the door.

“Nah, I gotta get back.  I’ll, uh, text you later.”

The next text took three days to come.  It was a gif of a dog slipping down the street on some ice.  She replied with a LOL emoji.  It wasn’t quite the same as it had been.  Though it was only via these silly images that they were interacting, there was a distance that had formed that even wordless communication couldn’t hide.  Perhaps, Rey thought, it was for the better.  She didn’t even know how long he was going to be in England.

 

**[i need help]**

**[???]**

The phone rang seconds after her confused reply.  “Hello?”

“Hey, it’s me.”  He sounded nervous?  Distressed?  Maybe he really did need help.  “I know you said you didn’t want to go to that party—and if you say no now, I’ll respect that and I’ll suck it up and—”

“Suck what up?  What’s going on?”  There was a bit of humor in her voice knowing it was that pompous military gala that had him all worked up.

“You remember Finn—the guy who texted you last time I had to leave?”

“Yeah.  He said he was your mate.”

“He is—he’s a great guy.  I love him.  We’ll be friends forever, but here’s the thing—”  Rey chuckled quietly at the speed at which Poe was speaking.  For some reason, she imagined him hiding in a bathroom making this clandestine cry for help.  “He keeps trying to set me up.  First it was his sister, then his girlfriend’s sister, then his cousin, then some kid he went to grade school with, then a teacher he had in grade school…”

Rey laughed out loud at that.  “His teacher?!”

“Listen, I will buy out your dinner menu for the night if you come with me and _save me_ from being paraded around like livestock.”

She gasped in between laughs and shook her head.  “Okay, okay.  This sounds like a very dire situation.  I have a friend who can cover the pub for me—don’t worry about that.  And I’m sure I can find something to wear…”  Inwardly, she groaned.  Rey’s wardrobe consisted mostly of leggings and jeans and t-shirts.  She had the boring black dress she had worn for Plutt’s funeral years ago.  This was going to be a literal nightmare.  What had she just agreed to?

“Really?!  Oh man, Rey you’re an angel.  I’ll pick you up Saturday at six.”

“Saturday?  _This_ Saturday?”

But he rushed out a thank you and a goodbye before she had the chance to change her mind.

It was lucky that there was so much crap in the upstairs of her pub.  And despite his hoarding, Plutt was organized in his mess.  There were several boxes labeled for “Amilyn” with some saying “dresses” or “hats.”  Whoever Amilyn was, she sure liked clothes.  Quite fancy clothes, at that.  She was a bit taller than Rey, so it took some hemming and other adjustments to get a dress she found to fit her correctly.

“You’ll be all right, Chewie?”  she asked the tall man with shaggy brown hair behind the bar as she came down the steps on Saturday evening.

Chewie grunted and nodded his head in an exaggerated fashion.

At promptly six p.m., Poe came through the door of the Rose and Crown.  He looked quite sharp in his dark blue mess dress, medals and ribbons pinned to his breast.  Behind her, Chewie huffed and grumbled.

“You look…”  Poe twisted his keys in his fingers as he stood looking rather shocked at her.  Rey really hoped it wasn’t a bad look.  “You look amazing.”

Rey could feel her cheeks warming as she looked down at her toes peaking out of her silver shoes.  They matched the silver sequins sewn all over in elegant patterns on the peach-colored dress.  It was a dated look, but hopefully it was so old it had come back around into style.  “You clean up nicely, too, Dameron.”

The moment of staring awkwardly at each other was broken by Poe trying to dance away from Bee trying to rub up against his leg, obviously not wanting cat hair on his very fine clothing.  Rey chuckled and shooed the cat away and, with another thanks to Chewie, she pushed Poe out the door so they wouldn’t be late.

It seemed Poe had gotten used to the narrow English roads he often complained about.  “What’s harder,”  she asked,  “driving on the opposite side of the road or flying?”

“Flying, definitely,”  he answered quickly.  “It’s harder to judge the right and left lane in the sky.”

“Ha-ha,”  she responded with a shake of her head.  “What’s this fancy party we’re going to?  All you’ve told me is that it’s black tie and there’s free booze.”

“I stopped listening after free booze.”  He laughed at her raised eyebrows and turned his attention back to the road.  “It’s just an annual military ball—everyone gets dressed up, some big wigs show up, they invite a couple guests of honor…  I guess the first time it’s pretty intimidating, but you just say hi, shake hands, and then enjoy the open bar.  I mean, I have to refrain because I have to drive you home later, but—”

“Oh, such a gentleman.”  She snickered at him.

“Of course!”

The event was inside an empty airplane hangar.  Empty in that it lacked an airplane, but it was full of well-dressed people, many in military dress uniforms, but of several different nations.  There was a small, live band playing upbeat music, caterers making their rounds offering wine and canapes, and many tables with white linens and blue centerpiece flowers were framing an open space in the middle—presumably the “ball” portion of the evening.  Rey thought it was rather chilly in January to have a party inside a drafty hangar, but with the portable heaters and the crowd, it was warmer than she expected.

“Dameron!”  someone shouted towards them.  Through the crowd came a dark-skinned man in a RAF uniform.  His fingers were interlocked with a shorter woman in a red dress; her round face framed by adorable black fringe.

“Finn!”  Poe grinned as they shook hands and slapped each other on the shoulder.  “Rey, this is Finn and Rose.  Rose is my crew chief and through her, I met Finn who has been a lifesaver throughout this whole tour so far.”

“Me?  You’re the lifesaver, mate.”  Finn grinned at Poe and they shared a quiet acknowledgment of something.  Rey caught that brief glimpse and suddenly felt guilty for having been upset with him for leaving suddenly.  Reminded that despite any sort of political opinion she might have, their jobs were dangerous and they had very little say in it.  “So this is Rey!  I have heard _so_ much about you, girl.”

Rey gasped in surprise as Finn wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly.

“Sorry, Finn’s a hugger,”  Rose apologized for him with a wince.  She offered her hand for a quick shake once her boyfriend was done with his hug.

“You’ve heard about me?”  Rey asked with a laugh.  “I’m sure there’s not that much to hear.”

“I honestly thought you were fake,”  Finn said.  “Thought Poe was pulling my leg saying he had a girlfriend just to get out of meeting all of my very nice friends.  And then when you never answered my text?  For sure—fake.”

“Oh, I’m real.  I’m not sure _everything_ he’s said about me is though…”  Rey turned slightly to give Poe a humorously suspicious look.  Poe had a wincing smile on his face and a look that was pleading her not to correct any little white lies he may have told.  She smirked as she slipped her arm into his.  “I think it’s only fair then that you tell _me_ everything about Poe.”

“Gladly!”  Finn laughed.  Poe groaned.  Rose chuckled and shook her head at the both of them.

Poe’s friends were delightful, Rey decided.  They were affable and kind and hilarious.  They all shared a quick-witted sort of humor that Rey delighted in.  A definite step up from the memes Poe had texted her in the past.  After the mingling and cocktails, everyone settled down for the speeches.  A General spoke about unity and nation building and blah blah blah—Rey didn’t understand the context for most of what she was saying, but it all sounded nice. They introduced Lord Calrissian and thanked him profusely for attending.  Rey found his purple cape that inexplicably fluttered behind him to be quite dashing.

“Here, I want to introduce you to my boss,”  Poe said, pulling her amongst the crowd once the speeches were all done and the band had picked up again.

“Are we going to talk about this telling people I’m your girlfriend thing?”

“Yes—sorry about that…”  Poe sighed and scratched the back of his head nervously.  “Later?  Please?”

Rey gave him a small smile, letting him know she wasn’t mad at him, just more wondering how it had come about.  She nodded and let him take her elbow and guide her towards where a regal looking woman was laughing and shaking hands with other important looking people.

“General Organa, this is Rey.  She owns the Rose and Crown, the pub I was telling you about.”

The woman took Rey’s hand and cupped it with the other, holding it as she shook it.  She was warm and firm; motherly, yet there was a fierce strength as well.  Rey gasped slightly when she realized that Poe’s boss was also the General who had been giving the speech earlier.

“It’s lovely to meet you, Rey,”  the General said to her with the same warmth that had been in her handshake.  “I want to hear all about your pub.”

“My pub?  Why?”  she asked with nearly a laugh.

“General Organa thinks it might be the same pub a friend of hers used to own.  Back in the seventies.”

Rey was fairly certain the shock was clear on her face.  Small bloody world.  “I’d love to hear about your friend sometime, General.  I have a whole wall with bits and pieces of the history of the pub that I’d love to add to.”

The General smiled and squeezed her hand again.  “I’ll drop by for lunch sometime and we’ll swap stories.  You two enjoy yourselves.”

“That’s mad,”  Rey told Poe as they walked away from the older woman, still in shock.  “People just whisper about the man who used to own it before Ducain.  Say he was some sort of bootlegger and smuggler.  Disappeared one night leaving behind loads of unpaid loans—but there’s this myth that there’s treasure buried somewhere in the town.  Pretty sure that’s why Plutt bought the pub.”

Poe chuckled, probably at the admiration she had for such a scoundrel.  But all of this—General Organa and her connection to Rey’s pub and legends of old—that didn’t absolve Poe from the little white lies he’d been telling.  She was about to bring it up again—pull him off towards an exit and outside in the cold if she had to, but the band swelled with a fresh chorus and he slipped his hand into hers.

“I love this song,”  he said quietly next to her ear.

“Bach?”

“Is that who that is?”  Poe grinned and pulled her into his arms, his hand planted firmly on her hip.

It bewildered her quite a bit that she couldn’t figure out if his charm was intentionally brash or entirely accidental.  It was likely that was the part that was the most charming.

“I’m sorry I told people you were my girlfriend,”  he said, and he did look properly contrite about it.  “I do talk about you to my friends because I like you and I enjoy your company when we do get together.  Then, when Finn kept trying to fix me up and I kept turning him down, he assumed it was because you and I…”

“And you never corrected him because it got him off your back.”

Poe nodded, a small smile still there on his lips.  “And then he kept asking me if you were coming to the ball and if you didn’t then the jig was up.”

“So are we still pretending?”  She raised an eyebrow at him mischievously, but then frowned.  She hadn’t meant it like—she hoped he didn’t take it that way.

There was a pause as he chewed on his lip for a second.  Perhaps, just for a moment, he thought she wanted to turn their fake relationship into a real one, which that would just ruin this very nice evening, but he smirked at her instead.  “Unless you want to fake break up with me in front of all these people.”

“Well, you do owe me a bit more of that free champagne, I think.”  She moved closer to him, her hand creeping further up his shoulder until they were standing entirely too close for it to be a proper waltz.

“Are you trying to help me sell it now?”  he asked, his mouth hovering dangerously close to her ear.

Rey smiled and placed a soft kiss on his cheek.  “What are friends for?”


	3. Valentine's Day

Lying to people, especially very good friends and those with whom his life literally depended on, was a very bad idea.  In the moment that Poe had done it, he knew it was wrong, but he also thought that by the time any of his friends met Rey, he’d have at least kissed her or taken her on a real date.  Then it would have been a much smaller lie—hopefully not even a lie at all.

And despite how many times he (and his job) reminded himself that he hadn’t come here to find a girl, it didn't stop the way he felt.  None of those future consequences of dating someone while he was in a foreign country on a temporary assignment really mattered when she smiled at him, or touched his hand—certainly not when she had kissed his cheek while dancing and then again when he dropped her off at home.

Sometimes, he thought she felt the same.  When her hand would linger on his as they said goodbye after getting coffee or she’d text him just before she went to sleep.  But when he’d asked her out again, something other than just a quick coffee or him having dinner at her pub, she had turned him down, again.  At least one of them had good sense.  Friendships could easily span continents, romantic relationships were several degrees harder.

Rey let him continue the charade of their faux relationship, however.  And made him pay dearly for it.

“Are those for me?”  Rey asked with a grin as he walked into the Rose and Crown early in the evening on February the fourteenth.

“The flowers, yes,”  he said handing her the simple bouquet of lilies.  “The candies are for the kids.”

“Because that’s _exactly_ what they need.”  She laughed and shook her head at him.  “ _You_ _’re_ the one who has to deal with them.”

“Hey!  Kids love me!  I got a bunch of model airplanes in the back of the car, too.  I think they’ll get a kick out of that.”

Rey had the grand idea (well, they had come up with it together, but he let her take credit for most of it) for increasing traffic on what was one of her slowest days of the year.  Who wanted to go to a local, family pub for Valentine’s Day?  They came up with the plan to clear out a side room currently being used as storage and offer babysitting to parents who wanted to enjoy a quiet meal alone without having to go through the trouble of finding their own babysitter.  Poe agreed, it was a brilliant plan.  Several families also agreed because they had a dozen kids signed up—the most people who had ever been in her pub at one time, Rey told him.

She roped in a couple friends to help her out serving for the night along with her friend Chewie who often ran the bar.  Poe had been “volunteered” for watching the children.  He didn’t have much experience with kids, but most people told him he was just a big kid himself.

The first little boy to arrive seemed nervous, but Poe took his hand and showed him around the fun stuff they had for the evening.  “Over here we’ve got chips—I mean _crisps_ —and there’s some candy and juice boxes.  Ms. Rey is gonna make a couple pizzas for you guys with _extra cheese_.”

The boy made grabby hands at the snack table and Poe led him over to get some treats before he could notice that Rey had led his parents out to find a table.

More children filtered in.  Some watched Moana on Poe’s ipad in the corner, others stuffed their faces with the snacks.  Everything was pretty smooth sailing, even with one little girl dumping almost the whole bottle of glue all over her model airplane.

“That is one way to make sure all the pieces stick together,”  Poe said as he tried to wipe the glue off her hands while another kid was trying to pull the laces out of his boots.

“Everyone doing fine in here?”  Rey asked, two pizzas balanced carefully in her hands as she walked into the room.

“Yep, totally fine,”  Poe answered, his fingers stuck to a paper towel and suddenly afraid to try and walk away lest he trip over his own feet.  He settled for just stepping out of his boots and pulled the little girl by the hand towards the door.  “I’m just gonna take her to wash her hands, if you want to serve the pizzas?”

Rey glanced from where he had left his boots and the child yanking out his laces, back to him and laughed.  “Be _fast_ ,”  she told him.  “I’ve got to get back to the kitchen.”

Poe spent the rest of the evening barefoot, covered in glue and sprinkles and cheese.  When it was all over, he felt more haggard and out of sorts than he had doing takeoffs and landings in literal war zones.  With the last child handed off to her parents, Poe dragged himself (still without shoes) through the empty pub and collapsed into a chair.  Rey, who somehow still was bubbling energy, picked up the bin of dirty dishes on the table he had sat down at and hauled it off to the kitchen.  Her friends were still hanging around in the back washing up; he could hear them all chattering and laughing.  Chewie’s laugh sounded like he was howling.

Rey came back out with a bowl of creamy pasta and a slice of red velvet cake and set them in front of him.  “I saved this for you, in case you didn’t get enough pizza and candy.”

“Those kids were ravenous,”  he said as he rubbed his hands over his face and through his hair.  Then regretted it when he realized everything was still a little sticky.  He wiped his hands again with a napkin and picked up the fork to ding into the food she had brought him—delicious as always.

Rey left to go help in the kitchen, but came back as he was finishing eating with a box in her hands.  “I got you something.  Well, I found it, and thought you might like it.”  She pulled a chair closer to him and handed him the box, nervous excitement dancing in her eyes.

Poe grinned and took the box from her.  He didn’t bother saying that she didn’t have to get him anything—the whole fake relationship, fake Valentines, whatever was happening.  Their friendship was real, and sometimes friends got each other gifts like—  “Wow.”

“Do you know what it is?”  she asked him eagerly as he pushed the paper wrapped around the grey, metal item away.

“Yeah, it’s an old—really old—pilot’s kneeboard.”  He whistled as he pulled the rectangular item, complete with the original brown leg straps, out of the white tissue paper and deposited the box onto the floor.

“The RAF used them.  I think this is from 1941.”

Poe flipped up the top to look underneath and gasped, then laughed.  “You know what this is?  This is the flight computer.  Pilot had it right in his lap.  The jet I fly cost thirty million dollars, and those guys won a world war flying tin cans.”

“Are you saying they were better pilots because they didn’t have all that technology to rely on…?”

“No!”  He gasped at Rey’s snickering and feigned as if he were gravely insulted.  “I’m saying _thank you_ and where did you even find it?”

Her shoulders shrugged slightly and she jerked her head towards the door that led to the stairs.  “I started going through some of the junk up there.  Figured no one’s coming back for it—time to move on.”

“Good for you.”  He smiled at her and reached out to squeeze her hand.  “And I will happily reap the benefits of whatever treasure you find.”

“Cool your jets there, flyboy.  Most of this crap is going on ebay, but should I find any more flight paraphernalia, I will let you make an offer.”

They sat in cheerful silence for a moment, his hand still lingering on hers.  Until his thumb brushed lightly against her knuckles and she seemed to remember his was still there.  Her hand pulled away and she started piling up the dirty plate and bowl to put away.  “I should get back into the kitchen and help them finish.”

Poe sighed slightly and rubbed his hands across his jeans.  “Yeah, I need to get back.  Got an early flight tomorrow.”

“Leaving?”  she asked and he could hear the slight disappointment in her voice, no matter how she tried to hide it.

“Nah, just some training.  Gotta get those hours in.”

“Don’t forget your boots,”  she told him, glancing down at his socks as he stood up.

Poe laughed because yeah, he had almost forgotten.  Would have remembered as soon as his feet hit the cold, wet pavement outside.  He quickly collected his things and as he slipped on his jacket, he was happy to see she was still waiting for him to say goodbye.

“You should come out tomorrow.  There’s a little hill outside the fence near the flightline.  Lots of folks come out with their cameras to watch the jets.”

Rey smiled and nodded.  “I’ll think about it.”

They embraced their customary farewell hug, Rey’s arms curling around his neck.  They held on a little longer than was usual, her fingers curling into his hair.  He gave her another quick squeeze and then an obnoxiously loud smack from his lips onto her cheek.  “See you tomorrow, scavenger.”

“I never said I was going,”  she said after him as he headed for the door.

“I’ll wave to you.  You’ll miss it if you don’t go.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a bit short, but things will be heating up tomorrow. ;) Thank you for reading! <3


	4. Disagreements

The day after Valentine’s Day, Poe called Rey at six a.m. to remind her he was doing morning touch-and-go’s and that she should come watch.  _Called_ her.  At _six a.m_.  She could even hear Rose in the background shouting, though Rey couldn’t make out what she was going on about.

“I’m going to kill you,”  Rey mumbled into the phone as it lay flat on her face, hardly any energy to hold or move it.

“You have to catch me first.  I’ll call you back in thirty minutes.”

“I’m not answering.”

It was closer to an hour before he called her back.  She smirked down at the phone sitting in the cup holder of her car.  “Told you I wasn’t going to answer.”

She drove along the Brize Norton fence until she came to the row of cars parked on the side of the road.  With a pop of her umbrella, she stepped carefully onto the maze of patches of grass to avoid the mud as she made her way to the top of the small hill.  It was a bit of a grey and dreary day, but there were several folks out with their binoculars and cameras to watch the jets fly.  In the distance, they could hear the hum of the engines getting ready and see the blinking runway lights through the light rain.

They came like a roar of thunder—five of them, one right after another.  They shot out into the sky in some choreographed chase.  One would bank and the next would follow.  A little boy giggled and cheered and around her clicked camera shutters.  They set out into the grey clouds until they were but little specks and then gone from sight.

“Where’d they go, papa?”  the boy asked.

“They’re coming back, just wait,”  his father answered.

And they did—from the other side, behind the hangers and tower, they came in low, touched the ground for barely a second, and then shot off again.  A scream of engines was heard as two jets went straight overhead.  The little boy slapped his hands to his ears, but bounced excitedly in the mud.

The next time the jets came around, as the last one took back up to the sky, it dipped it’s starboard wing, then its port, and again to starboard, before it banked back the other way and took off after the rest of the squadron.

“Oh, look at that, Bodhi!  It’s waving at us!  Wave back!”

The little boy jumped up and down and up and down, furiously waving at the plane as it zipped by again.

Rey laughed out loud and waved as well.  She could feel her cheeks burning, knowing who the pilot was and whom he was doing that for.  It was almost as if she could see him up there, sly little grin on his lips.  She wasn’t sure if he would be able to notice her down here, or if he did it anyway, in the hopes that she would be here to see it.

When they came around again, she had her phone ready to snap a few pictures of her own.  She couldn’t stay all morning to watch them play.  As she sat in her car and got ready to leave, she sent him a text:

**[I waved back]**

They met up again a few days later at what had become their place to get coffee.  A quaint little cafe in a village halfway between Brize Norton and the Rose and Crown.  It had a lovely high street with several shops, a bakery, and a letting office.  They walked down the sidewalk with her arm looped into his, not quite as intimate as holding hands, but a close enough contact that kept them both comfortable.

Lately, Rey wondered if it would be worth the chance to try something more.  To move beyond the “fake” relationship and make it a real one.  It felt like it probably was real.  Still that early infatuation perhaps, where her heart giggled at his texts and she anticipated every time they met.  It had been months now, and still she felt the same.  No, it was more intense now than it had been.  She had been tempted, when he would lean in and kiss her cheek to say goodbye, to turn her head.  Rey imagined burying her fingers in his curly hair and holding his lips to hers.  She’d kiss him and press in so close to him.  Drown in his scent, crushed in his embrace.

They stopped outside the letting agency with its windows plastered in advertisements.  Houses, rooms, flats—all sorts of local accommodations.

“I’ve been thinking of trying to find a way to stay longer.  See if they want to extend this program or maybe if a spot is opening at Lakenheath.”

“Lakenheath is quite a drive,”  Rey said absently as she stared at the lovely barn conversion advertised.

“Gotta go where the planes are.  Closer than Langley, or Okinawa.”

She glanced over at him—he had his finger up against the glass, looking like he was carefully reading about a two bedroom apartment in Faringdon.  “Really?  Stay long enough to warrant getting a real place to live?”

His shoulders shrugged slightly as he gave her a grin.  “Gotta grow up sometime.”

“Better late than never, I suppose.”

They walked further down, towards the car park, her arm still hooked with his.

“How would you feel about that?”  he asked.  “If I hung around a bit longer?”

The little fire that had been burning in her chest flared a bit brighter.  It was always that unspoken terminus waiting for them.  The day he’d fly away and not come back.  A foolish little thought crept into her thinking space.  The idea of him staying for a year or two, of leaving the American military and taking a job in civilian aviation.  She’d miss him while he flew down to Paris or Dubai, but they could have… forever?

Yes, that was completely foolish.

And suddenly, he was closer than she realized.  He had taken his gloves off and his fingers were delicately tracing down her hairline and tucking an errant lock behind her ear.  “Rey?”

His hair was peppered with the droplets of the ever-present English mist.  He was so close she could see them settled on his curls.  It was Saturday, so he hadn’t shaved—the day’s worth of scruff gave him a ruggedly handsome quality.  His eyelashes, sinfully long for a man, drooped as he leaned ever closer.  She could feel his breath, slow and warm in the cool winter air, wafting near her lips.

Rey wasn’t sure who made that first contact, or if the tension between them had finally snapped and they both gave in at the same moment.  It was slow at first, tentative and testing.  Just their lips cautiously meeting.  Poe pulled back just a touch, his eyes lifting towards hers—seeking that approval.

The bag in her hand slipped from her fingers and the box with her new pair of shoes hit the ground.  Her hands reached up and dug into his hair, pulling his lips back to hers.  She could feel his smile, but only for a second before he had his arms around her waist, pulling her into him.  His tongue pressed against her lips and she opened to him, inviting him in.  Her head felt light—maybe the sudden lack of breathing or the explosion of that slow-baked chemistry.

His hair was soft between her fingers in contrast to the rough scrape of his beard against her chin.  She liked both, she decided.  And the way he held her close—the warmth radiating from him.  Every nerve felt fried with the intimacy of his touch.  Rey had never thought of herself as an affectionate person before—there were those she had cared for, but to hug someone, kiss them, love them.  She realized she had been starving.

It was the rain that finally pulled her lips from his.  The mist had turned into large, cold droplets now dumping all over them.  Poe laughed and quickly opened her car door, fetched her parcel from the ground and tossed it into the seat.  He gave her a quick kiss as she fell back into the drivers seat, and one more before he shut the door.

Rey was positive she flew home.

They exchanged awkward but flirtatious texts the rest of the evening.  She had a hard time sleeping—tossed and turned in girlish excitement.  Rey blushed and chided herself for her own ridiculousness.  In the morning, in between putting pies in the oven, she sent him a picture of an empty shell, asking what filling he preferred.

There was no response.

In the evening, Rey sent him a picture of Bee who had gotten a plastic bag stuck around her middle and was rolling over and over trying to get it off.  She sent him a goodnight and a good morning the next day.

By the end of that day, she came to the acceptance that he was gone.  At first she thought him busy, then for a second she wondered if he thought that kiss in the rain had been a mistake, but she realized that he had left, again.  It was a mixed signal, a red flag.  All of their interactions were warm and wonderful—and that kiss had sent her to the stars—but he vanished without a word.  She knew she wasn’t entitled to know where he was or what he was doing, that legally he probably couldn’t tell her, but a heads up would have been nice.  Just the consideration—she thought she deserved at least that.

The best thing to do was to erase him out of her life as easily as he had left her behind.  She deleted his contact info out of her phone, blocked his number, and rebuilt all those carefully constructed walls around her heart.  Rey went back to her life, but not the waiting.  Poe had helped her move past the constant waiting for people who were never coming back, and thus she did not wait for him.

In a month, the misty grey of winter had begun to fade.  Buds started to pop out in the trees and bushes, the sun came out for a little bit each day.  It was that sense of renewal, of a fresh start, that helped Rey put Poe out of her mind.

At least, until he came looking for her.

Rey was wiping down the mats in the town hall, folding them up, and tucking them into a closet.  She took a long swig out of her water bottle and sighed as she saw Poe leaning up on the wood frame of the door, flat blue hat in his hands.  He looked disheveled and tired, his green flightsuit more rumpled than usual.

“I tried calling last night, but the call wouldn’t go through.”

Rey didn’t answer, just pulled out another disinfectant wipe and started wiping down the next mat.

“Then I stopped by your place and you weren’t there and I couldn’t remember where you said you were teaching so I just started driving and inviting myself into every town hall I came across.”

She folded the mat, hefted it up onto her shoulder, and walked it over to the closet.

“I’m sorry that I left without saying anything.  I understand that you’re upset, but—”

“Understand?”  The mat dropped into the closet and hit the ground punctuating her sharp response.  “If you understood…”  She couldn’t even find the words to say it.  That if he understood what it had been like to be abandoned, he never—

“I can’t wait for you, too,”  she told him as she headed towards the last mat on the floor.  “Just leave, Poe.”

“Rey, please—”  He had stepped up towards her, reached out and wrapped his fingers around her arm.

Perhaps it was the leftover adrenalin from the workout, or the hurt feelings still churning in her head, or maybe it was that she had just finished teaching about what to do when someone puts their hands where they shouldn’t be and the instinct took over.  She grabbed his arm, his shoulder, and then his back was on the mat.

Poe gasped and coughed, his eyes wide.  “I guess I shouldn’t have done that.”

She pulled up on the side of the mat until he rolled off, not giving him the chance to properly stand up.  Didn’t even ask him to move, just dumped his arse on the floor.  She wiped it down and squeezed it into the closet before locking it and finding her bag.

“Come on, Rey.  It’s not like we were really, you know, a thing.”

Rey was nearly out the door when she stopped and turned sharply towards him.  Her key was between her fingers and she jabbed it towards him as she spoke.  “I have to label my feelings before they’re valid enough for you to not leaving me hanging?  I thought it was common fucking decency to tell someone that you’ll be out of town for awhile.  Especially after you kiss them and you’re practically looking at apartments together!”

He held his hands up slightly, as if he were slightly concerned he might end up on the ground again.  “I know.  I know.  I’m sorry.  I just—it’s a thing that I do and if you let me explain—”

“No.  You don’t get to explain being a massive tosser.”

As Rey drove down the B-road that took her back to her village, she kept watching behind her to see if he was following.  On the one hand, she still had all those stupid feelings that wanted to forgive him, but on the other hand, it was a bit too stalkerish for him to follow her home.  She was relieved that he didn’t.

 

~*~

 

Poe sat in his car for twenty minutes after she’d left.  People walking down the street paused to stop and look at him, wondering if he was going to stay there all day.  A boy kept kicking a soccer ball into his tire until he finally turned on the engine.  He wiped his hands over his face (double checked to make sure that kid wasn’t hiding behind the car) and pulled away.

He drove back to his temporary lodging on Brize Norton, took a long needed shower, and thoroughly kicked his own ass.

What he had done was selfish and unnecessarily cruel, and to make it worse, he had tried to defend his poor decision.  He knew his way of coping, of making difficult missions easier on himself, was patently unfair to people like Rey.  He fell into the stiff, uncomfortable chair and used the landline to call the one person who might understand.

“Hey, Papá.”  Poe smiled as his father answered the phone.

“Ay, mijo!  ¿Cómo estás?  Did you just get back?”

“Last night.  I had a briefing this morning, but then…”  Poe sighed and wiped his hand across his face.  “I screwed up.”

“Que pasa?  They going to discharge you?  Well, I’ve been renting your room for the last ten years so, if you want it back, I have to give, like, thirty days notice.”

“I’m not—I’m not getting fired.  It’s not like that.”

“You know, you’re supposed to be funny when you call me.  Not mopey.  Oh, this is about that girl isn’t it?  You do just what I taught you—you bring her flowers, you bust out your guitar and sing her a song.  You brought your guitar, didn’t you?”

Poe sighed again and groaned.  “No, Papá, I didn’t bring the guitar.  If you want to mail it to me, I’ll try it your way in a few weeks.”

“No, this is time sensitive, mijo.  You give her too much time, and she realizes you are way too much trouble.  Hang up and call her.”

“She blocked my number.”

There was a long pause from his father on the other end of the line.  Poe knew just how deep the hole was that he was in when his father ran out of things to say.  “You say you’re sorry.  You be as open and honest as you can be.  And if she still says no, you respect that, Poe.  Seven billion people on this planet, mijo.  It’s hard, but you’ll find someone.”

Poe nodded on his end of the line, swallowing back the annoying lump in his throat.  “I’m gonna have to tell her about mom, huh?”

“If you like this girl as much as I think you do—and I can tell from that picture you sent me—you were gonna tell her anyway.”

“Are you still gonna send me my guitar?”

“No.  Probably be cheaper just to buy a used one over there.”

Poe let out a soft laugh as his head fell back over the edge of the chair.  “Thanks, Papá.  I’m gonna go, it’s late.  I love you.”

“Love you, too, mijo.  Cuidate.”

Poe dropped the phone back onto the cradle and let out another long sigh.  His dug his cell out of his pocket and flipped through his contacts until he found Finn.  He wondered if Rey had bothered to block all his friends or just him, but decided he shouldn’t put anyone else in the middle of this.  It was his mess.

His fingers pushed through the photo folder, scrolling through selfies and all the pictures he’d taken while he’d been in England.  There were a series of photos he’d snapped when they’d gone to London and she’d shown him Trafalgar Square.  All bundled up against the cold, most of the pictures of the two of them were two sets of brown eyes peeking out from hats and scarves.  And then there was the one Finn had taken of them at the ball.

He groaned loudly and pressed the phone to his forehead.  “Gotta fix this, Dameron.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh noooo what happened :O


	5. Friends to Lovers

Poe went back and forth several times on what he would do to try and explain himself to Rey.  He stood in the flower shop of the Tesco for almost thirty minutes debating which bouquet to buy, and then decided against it.  Too cliche.  Flowers, for this, were lacking.

He bought a used guitar, as his father had suggested.  More money than he wanted to spend, and then the hours spent tuning it, making it sound just the way he liked.  He showed it off to Finn and Rose as they sat around in the chow hall after the dinner rush.  They were enthusiastically supportive of him trying to get her back, even if they made him hum a few bars of an old lullaby to prove he could actually play the thing.

Bolstered by his friends encouragement, Poe drove out to the little English village with the small town pub and the woman who had captured all of his attentions.  It was a late Friday evening—Poe figured she’d have a couple families in early for dinner, and a couple local boys hanging around the bar.  He didn’t want to rush in on her while she was busy, so he waited until the last customer’s car left the parking lot, took a deep breath, and approached the door.

It was locked.

Poe knocked on the door and peered through the window.  He saw the orange tabby meander towards the door and he could hear Bee meowing on the other side.

“Bee, go get Rey,”  he said, trying to coax the cat to find her owner.  It was a fool’s errand, of course.  Cats did what cats wished.  Bee came up to the door and started scratching at it, meows continuing.

Eventually, Rey appeared, rag in hand and went to work wiping down the tables.  Poe knocked on the door again and she glanced up towards where all the noise—the knocking and the cat—was coming from.  When she got close enough to see who was standing outside, she frowned at him.  As she turned away, Poe rapped quickly on the door one more time.

“Rey, please, just let me explain,”  he pleaded, but she went back to wiping down tables and ignored him.

A small fire of determination lit under him because she hadn’t _really_ told him to leave, just hadn’t said anything.  He went back to his car and got his guitar and stood outside that old, locked door.  He tested a few chords first, cleared his throat, and screwed up his courage to stand outside in the dark and sing like some dumb, lovestruck teenager.

_“I thought love was only true in fairy tales._

_Meant for someone else, but not for me._ _”_

It was difficult, getting through those first bars as the meowing picked up and Bee tried to sing along.  Rey slowly turned from what she was doing.  He couldn’t quite make out her features, but he was sure she must have looked shocked with the way her hand had stopped mid-wipe.

_“Then I saw her face.  Now I’m a believer._

_Not a trace of doubt in my mind._ _”_

The sudden surprise seemed to wear off and though Poe kept playing, she finished wiping the table and then disappeared from view.  She reappeared a minute later with the vacuum.

“Ouch.”  Poe stopped playing.  He’d never had someone try to drown him out with home appliances before.  “Maybe she likes something newer?  What do you think, Bee?”

The cat meowed.  He plucked the chords of a James Arthur song, though he couldn’t remember all the words.

_“Then you smiled over your shoulder,_

_For a minute, I was stone-cold sober._

_I pull you closer to my chest._ _”_

He hummed the rest, making up most of the chorus as he tried to mimic the popular romantic song.  Rey seemed even less impressed with this attempt and didn’t pause vacuuming.  He watched her roll the power cord back up and wheel the vacuum away.  He didn’t stop playing though, and when she reappeared, turning off lights as she went, he tried something a little different.

_“Te necesito, te necesito mi amor._

_Dondequiera que tu estés,_

_Me hace falta tu calor._ _”_

It was his mother’s song, the one she would play on repeat and walk around the house humming.  She’d sing it to his father and Poe must have listened to it a thousand times after she died.  Bee, it seemed, had gotten tired of meowing and walked away to rub against Rey’s legs.  Rey tried not to trip over the cat and made her way through the pub, adjusting chairs and other things, until she was back at the front door and the last light left on.

_“Porque eres parte de mí_

_Te necesito aquí_

_Y es—_ _”_

The rest of the chorus was cut off as the lock on the door clicked and the latch came undone.  Rey pulled the door open and with a sigh, jerked her head to invite him in.  “It’s bad for business if you get pneumonia on my doorstep.”

Poe smiled lightly, but lost it when she didn’t smile back.  He stepped through the door quickly, before she could change her mind.  He set the guitar down against the wall and ran his fingers through his hair.  “Rey, I’m sorry—”

“Just skip the apology and go right to what you want to say.  Explain it to me, Poe.”

“Okay.”  His hands twisted in front of him, suddenly wishing he had the guitar to at least occupy his limbs during this conversation.  “My mom was a pilot.  It was a bit different back then, than it is now, but she’d still be gone for weeks at a time.  Every time she had a mission, she’d call to let us know she’d be out of touch for awhile.  And then she’d call again when she got back.”

Rey sat down in one of the chairs and watched him as he spoke.  Her hard features softened slightly at the mention of his mother, but she didn’t look any closer to forgiving him.

“September 2nd, 1996, she calls and says she’s taking off again.  Two days later the phone rings.  It’s the President calling for my dad because my mom’s plane was shot down.  I just—”  Poe took a second to swallow back the sudden grief.  Twenty years and merely talking about it brought all those feelings and memories to the surface.  “I don’t call my dad and tell him I’m leaving, I call him when I get back and tell him some dumb joke so he knows I’m—you know.

“I don’t like saying goodbye.  I figure, if I don’t, then I have to come back.”

Rey looked down at her hands for a second and sniffed.  If she had been moved by what he said, she was doing a good job of holding it in.  After a moment, she got back to her feet and walked towards him.  She chewed on her lip as if chewing on her words.  “Did you even think about what that did to me?”

“Honestly?  No,”  he said with a sigh.  “I did what I always did, but I’ve never had someone like you who was waiting for me.  The first thing I wanted to do when I got back was talk to you and I felt like shit when it hit me what I’d done.”

Looking at Rey, she was younger than him, but so much more grown-up.  She had her own business, her own house, another job on top of running this place.  And she had done it mostly on her own.  But she was always waiting, she had told him that.  Waiting for her parents to come back, waiting for the people Plutt had swindled to finally take back what was theirs, and now, waiting for him.

“I’m sorry, Rey.  I had no right to do that to you—to just leave and make you wait for me.”

She took a long, slow breath and wrapped her arms around him.  She held on tightly, yet tentatively, as he took the chance and curled his arms back around her.  She rested her head on his shoulder and sighed.  He wasn’t sure if this was forgiveness, but he had missed this feeling, so he held her close and savored the moment.

“Are we okay?”  he asked quietly.  “Still friends?”

There was a soft sniffle on his shoulder and her head shook just a tad.  “No, Poe.  We’re not friends.”

It stuck him in the chest.  She wasn’t going to forgive him.  She was saying goodbye.  The silly thing that he avoided, she was going to do it with ease.

Her fingers, trembling slightly, reached up and curled around his ear.  She lifted her face towards his and gently pressed her lips to his.  His mind reeled in confusion, but his hands gripped around her waist and he kissed her back.  Rey pushed her fingers back into his hair as she deepened the kiss.

“I don’t kiss my friends,”  she said breathily.  “And I don’t spend every moment thinking about the friends I’m angry with and wishing they’d pick up the phone and try again because I unblocked your number four days ago.”

Poe let out a relieved laugh and kissed her again, his hands moving up to her hair to free it from the loose buns so he could run his fingers through it.  “So you just let me stand out there in the cold for thirty minutes plucking at that guitar?”

“Yeah, pretty much.”  Her fingers toyed with the curls on the back of his neck sending sparks of electricity down his spine.  “It was a beautiful song.  What does it mean?”

Cool, confident Poe Dameron, grey angel of destruction, felt the heat coloring his cheeks.  He craned his neck, self-consciously moving away from her just a bit, but her hands and arms were still curled around him, holding him in place.

“I need you.  I need you, my love.  Where ever you are, I need your warmth.”

It was Rey’s turn to blush as she let out a small laugh and dipped her head to his shoulder.  “It seems silly to fall in love with someone after only a few months.”

“Sweetheart, I was there that first snowy night.”

She looked back at him at his abrupt confession.  “Why didn’t you do anything then?”

His shoulders shrugged slightly and then he leaned forward, pressed his lips to her throat, and inhaled deeply the scent of her hair and skin.  “Didn’t want to mess it up.  Had to make sure you felt the same.”

Rey pulled away, a smile playing on her lips.  She moved behind him and locked the door once more, this time with him on the right side of it.  She ran her fingers down his arm and clasped his hand with hers.  Slowly, she started pulling him towards the door that led upstairs.  Bee protested with a loud meow as Rey stuck her foot out to keep the cat from making it through the door and following them.

She led him to the back room that was hers and slipped her hands into his coat, pushing it off his arms and to the floor.  He watched her almost in a trance, drinking her in as she carefully pulled his arms out of his sleeves and pulled his shirt over his head.  As she went for the buckle on his jeans, he grabbed onto her hands and stopped her.

“Rey… I can’t tell you I won’t leave again, and I can’t even say if we’ll be on the same side of the planet in a few months.  What will happen then?”

She smiled at him, thoughtful, but sure.  “I don’t know, Poe.  I just want to take every moment we have.  And I think, if we’re open and honest with the things happening in our lives, we can figure it out.”  She swallowed and her neck flexed slightly as if she was trying to hold back a sudden swell of emotion.  “And if it doesn’t work, then we’ll let go with a lot of really great memories.”

“I don’t want to let go.”

“Me neither.”

Poe swept her back into his arms and kissed her everywhere—her cheeks, her lips, her throat.  Hands roaming across each other as they tumbled back onto the mattress.

 

~*~

 

In the quiet dark, with only the wind rattling the old windows, Rey watched Poe as he slept with a post-coital heaviness.  Watched his bare chest rise and fall, and how his nose sniffed and twitched while he slept.

Was it a mistake?  No, she didn’t feel regret.  She worried about her future self that would one day have to say goodbye to him.  But the Rey laying here, right now, curled against his warm body, she was happy.  She could say goodbye, she thought, if she knew he was safe and happy, but she didn’t want to think about that right now.

In the morning, she woke to the scratch of his beard on her throat as he kissed his way to her lips to pull her from sleep.  “Good morning,”  he hummed against her lips.

“Is it?”  she laughed lightly as she ran her fingers down and up his arms and then combed them through his hair.

“The best,”  he confirmed, brushing his lips against hers again.  “What should we do today?  I vote stay in bed.”

“I wish,”  she said with a laugh.  “I do brunch on Saturdays, and after that, I have to get the roast ready for tomorrow.  So I actually need to get up very soon.”

“How soon?”

“Soon enough that we don’t have time for _that_!”  she squeaked out a giggle as his hands drifted down her body and squeezed.

“If you say so.”  He gave her a wink and let her climb out of the bed to get ready for the day.

Poe was distracting, to say the least.  He helped a bit, peeling potatoes and beating eggs—which he didn’t have to do.  But he also often crept up behind her, put his hands on her hips and started swaying to a song stuck in his head.  Rey told him if he was going to spend all his time humming and trying to get her to dance, he should get his guitar and put on a show.

“Maybe I can put singing pilot in an advert,”  she told him with a grin.

He chuckled and leaned against the counter as he chewed on a carrot stick.  “Can’t promise it won’t just send them running for the hills.”

“No, you’re good!  Tell me about it—how long you’ve been playing, why you chose the military over music?”

“Well, that’s easy.  Military is a guaranteed paycheck.”  He moved slightly as she set a pan on the counter and pulled out a couple plates.  “My parents were into music, but both of them did other things for jobs, too.  Mom was a pilot, dad worked as a farmhand.  I was in a band in high school.”

“That does not surprise me,”  she said with a laugh.  “Long hair?  Chains?  Flannel?”

“Wow, did you go to my school?  I think I’d remember the cute British chick.”

She smiled at him as she left him in the kitchen to serve the two plates of breakfast.  There were the usual patrons she saw every week, not any more than usual.  She thanked them and asked if they needed anything else, and then went back into the kitchen where Poe was balancing a spoon on his nose.

“So what about you?”  he asked.  “Think you’ll run this pub forever?  Have any other talents other than kicking ass?”

“Since it’s my home, yes, probably.  And I have never had to call a repairman.  Anytime anything around here breaks, I just fix it myself.”

“Even that beat up old Peugeot you drive?”

Rey gave him a satisfied smile and nodded.

Poe laughed and stopped messing with the spoon to walk over to her.  He wrapped his arms around her and leaned in close.  “You are ridiculously out of my league.”

“Probably,”  she agreed with a grin.  “But I’ll keep you anyway.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Song credits: "I'm A Believer" by The Monkees, "Say You Won't Let Go" by James Arthur, "Te Necesito" by Shakira


	6. Soulmates

Poe was in his cockpit.  Except…  It wasn’t.  It had the familiar feel, the limited space, the helmet pressing on his head, and the buckles strapping him into the chair.  In his mind, he knew that this was his, but he also knew that it wasn’t.

It wasn’t until he saw the stars that he realized the absurdity of where he found himself.

Obviously, it was a dream.  He was in space in a very small craft, but with controls he recognized and understood.  He let out a long sigh and nodded his head.  If this was a dream, he was going to take full advantage of it.  Sometimes, if he focused really hard, he could control his dreams, but it was usually at the end when the conscious part of his mind was already waking up.  He’d only have a few minutes to enjoy this astronaut joy ride.

Poe gripped the stick and pulled sharply to the left.  The craft responded instantly and banked hard.  A surprised whoop of joy left him as he jostled in the seat as he pulled the craft through a series of turns and rolls.

A whistling beep behind him startled him and made him put the craft to rights.  “What the f—”

The beeps—somehow they made sense in his brain.  They were asking him what he was doing.  They were supposed to be on a return course to the fleet.

“Just uh… just having a little fun,”  he responded to the… ship?  Computer?  Whatever was making that (somewhat adorable) noise.  “Can you point me back towards this fleet?”

More agitated sounding whistles followed and the console in front of him lit up with a helpful little arrow pointing the way to a blinking light.  With assistance, he found the massive grey ship and several other smaller ships.  Somehow, he knew which bay to go into and how to set the craft down gently and power it down.  He disengaged from the ship and pulled the helmet off of his head and took in the view of the massive hangar and only a glowing blue forcefield-thing that protected them from the vacuum of space.

There was another familiar thread to the scene, but one that he recognized where it came from.  It was like any other end-of-mission buzz—people in uniforms going about their varied tasks.  Mechanics were checking out the machines, other pilots were standing around chatting, and the smell of fuel and someone’s lunch drifted around the space.  He climbed out of the cockpit and hopped down to the ground.  The thing he’d been inside—black with an orange stripe.  Man, it looked fast.  He wished he was still out there, pushing it to its limits.

Something knocked him in the back of the legs.  When he turned around, and then looked down, he saw a funny looking robot made of a giant ball and a little half-smaller-ball for a head.  It started beeping and whistling at him and Poe recognized it as the noise in the craft.

“Oh, was that you?  Were you in there?  You’re the cutest roomba I’ve ever seen.”

The ball robot jerked backwards like it was shocked and gave him a terse whistle.  Could robots really be “shocked” and “terse”?  This one certainly seemed to be.

“Poe!  You’re back!”

Poe’s grin grew even wider as he laughed at the voice he knew.  “Finn!  This place is wild!”

“Did you do it?”  he asked.  “Did you get them?”

“Uh, yeah.  Got ‘em all.”  _Nah, I have no idea what you_ _’re talking about dream-Finn._  “Hey, you gotta come out with me.  I always wanted to be an astronaut, but they don’t let you do barrel rolls in NASA rockets.”

Finn gave him a sideways glance, then looked down at the ball robot.  “Did he hit his head?  You know I don’t fly those things, Poe.”

“Really?  Even here?”

Finn shook his head at him and slapped him on the shoulder.  “Come on, the General is waiting for us.  She wants a full report.”

Finn had to practically drag him to the bridge.  Poe stopped every few feet to look out a viewport or stop someone to say hello.  There were blue people and green people and people with horns and tentacles on their heads.  He was like a damn kid with very poor impulse control.  Somehow, he wasn’t surprised to see that General Organa was also the General here.  She was the obvious choice.  She gave him a small smile and shook her head when he gave her a lazy salute, as if she was in on the joke.

“Poe!”

“Rey!”  Poe whooped and laughed and swept her up in his arms, twirling her around.  There were gasps and whispers and amused chuckles across the bridge as Poe leaned in and kissed her deeply, tongue and all.  “I’ve been trying to open my eyes, but you’re here, so I guess I can stay awhile.”

Rey laughed lightly against his lips, her fingers curling against the back of his neck.  “Me too,”  she whispered.  “I have a laser sword.”

“That’s awesome!”  Poe gleamed, even though she was trying to keep quiet, he was still that kid in a candy store wanting to see and taste everything.  He gripped her hand tightly.  “Come fly with me.”

“Fly?”  She blinked at him.

“Yeah.  Let’s go, Rey.  Fly off into the stars.  Until we hit forever.”

 

“I had the strangest dream,”  Rey said, sitting up in the morning.  The sheet was pulled up to her chest, but her bare back was exposed to him.  While she sat up, wiping the sleep out of her eyes, Poe lazily ran his fingers down her spine.

“Me too,”  he mumbled as he played with the hair spilling down her back.  “My flightsuit was bright orange, like a prison inmate.”

“My cat was a robot.”

“Okay, yours was weirder.”  He yawned and stretched out his limbs, swiping his hands over his face to try and wake up.  “What do you think about flying, Rey?”

She turned and looked at him, combing her fingers through her long hair thoughtfully.  “I always thought it looked fun.  I’ve never been on a plane before.  Never even really been out of this part of the country.”

“Do you have a passport?”

“I do!”  She smiled with the declaration.  “After Plutt died, I got it.  I thought I would leave this place—see somewhere else that was new and amazing.  But I didn’t have any money and I didn’t want to go by myself and…”

Poe pushed himself up into a sitting position and wrapped his arms around her.  He planted gentle kisses across her shoulder.  He knew why she hadn’t left; why she stayed in this place.  Waiting for people who didn’t deserve her.  “Well, there’s this flying club at Brize Norton.  Small, hobby planes.  I could teach you.  Don’t even have to leave Oxfordshire.”

“I think I flew in my dream,”  she said lightly, as if part of her mind had drifted back off to the place her subconscious had been.  “Yes, I’d like that.”

Poe grinned and squeezed her tight.  And just like that, he was awake and an excited bundle of energy at the idea of taking her up into the skies.  And flying away.  To forever.

 

~*~

 

Poe’s friends were even more wonderful the second time she met them.  Rey had insisted he invite them to the pub for the Sunday roast with all of the fixings.  She even closed the doors to the public for the evening so she could enjoy the conversation and not have to take care of other patrons.

“Oh, I knew!”  Finn said when she asked about all the people he had tried to set Poe up with.  “I knew, if this girl was real, he needed that extra push to talk to her.  Because he talked about you _all the time_.  Didn’t he, Rose?”

“Well…”  Rose smiled and shook her head slightly, not quite confirming her boyfriend’s allegations.  “Your name did come up a bit.  It was a relief to finally meet you.”

Though Rey didn’t bring up the strange dream she had the night before where it felt like she knew Finn better than she knew Poe.  Where they had shared this strange, deep kinship.  She still felt it, just on the edges of her mind.  Like she had known him far longer than these last few months and she knew that he would be the one she’d reach out to if she ever needed anything.  It was strange, but welcome—completing, in a way.

There was a knock on the door and Poe offered to get up and let whoever it was know that they were closed for a private function.  “General!  This is a surprise!”  Poe said loud enough for the rest of them to hear.

Rey watched as Finn and Rose nearly vaulted to their feet, pushing out their chairs and wiping their hands.  She stood awkwardly after them as General Organa walked into the main dining area.

“Oh, sit down,”  she told them, waving her hands in an annoyed fashion.  “This smells delicious!”

“I’ll get you a plate, ma’am,”  Rey said smiling.

“You can call me Leia, dear.  The rest of them can still call me ma’am, but you can call me Leia.”

Rey grinned and nodded and moved to go find another place setting.  Poe came back in a few minutes later balancing a couple of rough looking boxes.

“Just set those down here,”  Leia told Poe and then picked up a fork as Rey set the plate in front of her.  “Oh, I love a good roast.  Did you make pudding, too?”

“Yes, Leia.  Sticky toffee, of course.  Custard or cream?”

“Oh, custard!  But in a bit, I’m going to enjoy this first and then I found some things for you.”

“For me?”  she asked, surprised, but Leia didn’t answer, just dug into the dinner.

“She’s a keeper,”  she said after several minutes of eating, giving Poe a wink over the table.

Rey blushed a tad as she watched Poe look a bit flustered at the comment.  But she had a feeling it was more about _who_ was giving such a comment rather than its content.  While the conversation was pleasant, if a bit delicate considering Leia was their boss, their General was quite talkative.  Rey was especially fascinated with what she had to say about the village and surrounding area the last time she was here.

Apparently, it was a bit busier back in the late 1970’s/early 1980’s, when Leia had been her last.  Which Rey knew, but she loved hearing about the people who had used to live here and the business that they ran.  Rey nodded, telling her that the Antilles family still ran the granary.  Old Man Kenobi was still out herding his sheep and losing some of them on the road.  The Ersos had moved out years ago, gone to London.

As they shared the dessert, Leia finally opened one of the boxes and started pulling out old photographs.  There were many of a young officer with long hair up in braids—Rey realized quickly that this woman was Leia.  She was with a roguish looking fellow with shaggy hair and shirts with half of its buttons undone.

“Oh, that’s Chewie!”  Rey practically screamed as she recognized her friend and sometimes-barkeep in one of the photos.  “His hair has always been that way, hasn’t it?”

“It’s got a bit more grey in it now, but yes.”

“Do you want me to call him?  Bring him over?  I’m sure he’d love to see you!”

But Leia just waved her hand.  “I talked to him a couple hours ago.  We actually see each other all the time now that I’m over here again.”

“He didn’t tell you that he knew my commander?”  Poe leaned over and whispered to her.

“Chewie doesn’t really talk all that much,”  Rey told him.

“Oh, here we go.  These ones are of this place, back when my friend owned it.  And I use own very loosely—he won it in a card game and then abandoned it when he realized he had to pay taxes.  Not to mention he was American and probably had long overstayed his visa.”

“I heard he left because he was in deep with some loan sharks,”  Rey said.

Leia thought for a moment.  “That, too.”

Rey looked at the pictures Leia had taken out.  The pub was hardly recognizable.  “The Millennium Falcon?  Really?  Who names a classic village pub _that_?”

“Americans,”  Finn said, shaking his head.

“And a space theme?  Look at this travesty, Finn.”  Rey handed the photos over and they were both shaking their heads with British disdain.  “I guess Ducain did one thing right.”

Leia chuckled.  “I make no excuses for the seventies.  You did all right, Rey.  This place looks amazing.  I’m sure Han would say so, too.”

“Any idea where he is now?”  Rey asked.

“Owns a dirt track outside Tampa.  Fights with his son, lives off his wife’s government paycheck.  He’s doing all right for himself, too.”  She smiled and winked at Rey.

It was late, when they all finally said goodbye.  Though it seemed to make Poe, Finn, and Rose cringe awkwardly when Rey hugged Leia, it felt right to her.  She was a kind woman who had a connection to this place that she had grown to love.  They all felt connected, somehow.  Like they were all threads of the same cloth that had been cut up and sewn into different garments, but then finally reunited.

Finn and Rose left shortly after, and she hugged them just as tightly.  They all exchanged numbers and promises to meet up again soon.

And then it was just her and Poe (and Bee).

“This is my house,”  she said as she watched the lights leave the car park and drive off into the night.  “I have lived here almost my whole life and for so long it felt like a cage—like I was trapped here.  This is the first time it’s really felt like my home.  That I belong here.”

Poe wrapped his arms around her and pulled her in close, planting a kiss on the side of her head.  “Would it be weird if I said ‘me too’?”

“A little bit.”

“What I mean is,”  he said, pulling away slightly so he could look at her,  “I feel like I’ve been drifting through life.  I’ve enjoyed it, don’t get me wrong, but I’ve never really felt connected to the places I’ve been or the people around me, until now.”

“Do you want to stay again tonight?”  she asked, hopeful as her fingers twisted together with his.

“I have to go to work in the morning.  But…”  He rocked slightly as he debated the pros and cons of such a decision.  “If I get up _really_ early…. I could pull it off.”

“How early?”

“Four.”

Rey groaned and pressed her head into his shoulder.  “That’s so early.”

“If we go to bed _now_ …”  He gave her a sly smile and bit his lip.

Rey laughed and nodded, and then moved to lock the front door and shut off the lights.  She left the dishes soaking in the sink to deal with in the morning.

“You better not wake me up at four in the morning,”  she told him as they headed up the stairs.

“Or what?”

“Or no more sleepovers on school nights.”

“Yes, ma’am.”


	7. "Trapped" Together

Spring was bliss.  New love, new friendships—an entire new outlook on life itself.  Poe had learned the quickest route to get from Brize Norton to the Rose and Crown, and he practically flew there in record time whenever he could.  He discovered sleeping over on work nights was a little too hard on his body and spent most nights in his hotel room.  But every weekend, down day, and holiday was spent with Rey.  In her bed, in her house, in her life.

In April, he got some news, and he couldn’t wait to tell Rey.  He popped by her place during lunch.  “Hey, I got some news,”  he told her solemnly, trying to play it very serious.

“What’s going on?”  she asked as she poured him a glass of lemonade.

“They’re kicking me out of my room,”  he said with a shake of his head.  She looked concerned for half a second, but then raised an eyebrow at him and waited for the next part of his news.  Seems she was used to his antics already.  “General Organa worked out a deal with our partners to extend the program to a full two years.  They told me I had to get a real place to live; that the government wasn’t going to pay for a hotel anymore.”

“Two years?!”  Rey practically shrieked and leapt over the bar to hug him.  Thinking better of it, she rushed around the side and threw herself into his arms.

Poe laughed as she squeezed him tightly.  Originally, he was set to leave in six weeks and they had already begun to dread it.  But now… the whole world seemed open again.  “Yeah, and they’re keeping Finn’s unit attached to us, too.  So we’ll all be together.”

“That’s amazing!”  Rey squealed and kissed him.  Poe beamed at how happy she was.  He was, too, but her smile meant the world to him.

Though Rey had finally cleared out most of the rooms in the upstairs of her pub, Poe rented the end unit of a terraced house in Faringon, halfway between their two jobs.  It was small, but he had essentially no household items and had to buy a bed and a couch and other regular life things.  Rey still spent most days at the pub because that was her home, though she had clothes and a toothbrush and a litterbox for Bee at his place, too.

His father came to visit over the summer, brought him his guitar, too.  Poe was excited to show him all the great places he’d discovered in England—London, Bath, Stonehenge, all of it.  He was especially excited to introduce him to Rey, and they hit it off better than Poe could have hoped.

“You know, when I met Shara,”  his father said one warm evening as they sat out on the Rose and Crown’s patio having a beer,  “I knew.  That very day, that was it.  She was the one.”

“Yeah, I know.”  Poe grinned as he relaxed in the chair and sipped at his drink.

“She’s the one, mijo.  Don’t screw it up.”

Poe laughed and nodded at his father.  “I’m trying not to.”

Poe still left on missions he couldn’t talk about.  Sometimes for a few days, sometimes longer.  After New Years, he was gone for six weeks.  He always told her though, as much as he could.  Never again just up and leaving.  He learned to say “I’ll see you real soon” instead of “goodbye.”  And he called from downrange, when he was able.  He even wrote her a letter with a pen and paper.  Sealed it with a kiss like some old time war romance.

He missed her something terrible when he had to go, but he knew she missed him even more.  Even though he had been a boy, he remembered what that anxious waiting felt like.  And every time he came home, they wrapped their arms tightly around each other for what felt like days and at the same time not long enough.

 

~*~

 

It was four months out from the time they expected the assignment at Brize Norton to end.  They still hadn’t really talked about what would happen after.  Poe had shown her the list of places he could be sent to—bases that had openings in their F-15 squadrons and needed someone of his rank and experience.  There were a few back in the States, and other places around the world, and one at Lakenheath.  He wasn’t sure he’d qualify for it, but tried not to let her lose hope.  They’d figure something out.

Finn was getting out of the RAF at the end of the tour.  He’d done his time and was planning to go back to school and spend time with his parents and sister in London.  The last Rey had heard from Rose, they were in the same sort of predicament.  Rose wasn’t sure where she’d end up next and had vague hopes of staying somewhere in England.  Rose, it seemed, was far less attached to aircraft maintenance than Poe was to flying.  She was happy to tinker with anything and had already started looking for civilian jobs.  Finn, like Poe, was equally hopeful that everything would work out.

Rey tried not to think about the future when her head was laying in Poe’s lap as they sat out on a picnic blanket on a hill atop the Vale.  It was a mild day near the end of summer and they ate the last of the strawberries as they laid out under the sun.  They watched as kids and families ran up and down the hill and tourists took pictures of the White Horse.

“I think this is my favorite place,”  Rey said as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand and tossed her strawberry stem out into the grass.

“Better than the Louvre?”

“Oh that was nice, but rather stuffy and they don’t let you touch anything.”

Poe chuckled as his fingers danced up her arm.  He had taken her to see so many places.  They’d been to Paris and Brussels and Koln.  Spain and Italy were next on the list.  He’d shown her the clouds, too.  Taken her up in a small prop plane.  Told her she was a natural.  It was the most fun she’d had in her entire life—it was addicting, too.  She understood instantly his love of flying.

“Are you all right?”  she asked, noticing how he kept glancing at his phone and then his bag and then staring off into the distance.  “You’re a bit… fidgety.”

“I’m good.  Think maybe some ants, or something.”  He flicked an invisible bug off his hand and picked up his phone again to look at whatever it was he kept looking at.

Rey sat up and maneuvered herself so she was sitting in his lap, arms draped over his shoulders.  She kissed him, slow and sweet, savoring the sweet taste of the leftover strawberries and cream.  “I’ll miss this,”  she said as a wave of melancholy overcame her.  “Sitting out here in the sun with you.  Sitting by the fire.  Sitting on the train, in the car, in the cockpit.”

Poe sighed softly and brushed his hands across her hair.  He took a long, deep breath, like he was preparing for something.  Rey felt her heart stop for just a second before it beat loudly in her ears.  Something had been bothering him, she knew it.  Was he finally going to tell her?

His fingers reached out and dug into cooler bag and found a white envelope.  “Here,”  he said, handing it over.

“What’s this?”

“Just read it.”

It was a form, a US Air Force official looking form.  It had a his name, rank, a few signatures.

“Right here.”  His finger hovered somewhere in the middle of the page.

“Depart: RAF Brize Norton.  Arrive: RAF Lakenheath.”  Her eyes widened and her entire face lit up as the understanding dawned on her.  He wasn’t leaving.  Well, he was going almost three hours to the northeast, but he wasn’t going back to the US or Japan or anywhere she’d have to travel a day and spend hundreds of pounds to get to.  She laughed and bounced out of his lap, her legs hardly able to contain the excitement.  “Report no later than thirty-one December!  Christmas here and then we can celebrate New Years at your new place!  How long?”

When she glanced back at him, the question on her lips as to how many more months or years they’d get to continue this blissful love affair, he was in a very peculiar position.

Poe had propped himself up on one knee and in his fingers he had a small, black box.  He fumbled with it, trying to get it popped open before she could realize what he was doing.  Rey nearly dropped the paper in her hands, but realized quickly he probably wouldn’t want it floating away and crinkled it in her fingers tightly.

“Rey—”  he started, taking another quick breath.  “You are the spark that lights up everything in my life.  And sometimes when we talk about how things are going to be over one day and how much we’ll miss each other, I think ‘no, that’s not how this is supposed to go.’  I know that we’ll still have weeks and months where we’ll be apart, but I always want to come home to you.”

She stood there, struck dumb for the moment.  Her mouth was dry and she nearly swallowed her tongue trying to get it moist again.  Her mind had gone blank looking at him.  Rey was overjoyed at the news they could be together for another two or three years, but now, he was offering forever.

He finally got the box open, revealing a tiny band of silver with three, small clear gems inlaid in the band.  It was simple and beautiful.  The paper cut into her fingers and her teeth bit into her lip as she watched him look up at her.  Big brown eyes, hopeful, and full of love.

“Rey, will—”

“Yes, Poe.  Yes!”  She didn’t even let him get the words out.  He leapt to his feet in a rush and they collided together in a laughing embrace.  There were tears in her eyes as he pulled the band from the box and both of their hands were shaking as he slipped the ring onto her finger.

Cheers and claps sounded around them.  Neither one of them had taken notice of the people that had paused to watch the engagement on the hill.  Rey was blushing furiously at being suddenly on the spot, but Poe smiled at her and cupped her cheek with his hand, with the other he was holding onto hers, fingers pressing against the bit of metal, the promise, he had given her.  He leaned in and kissed her fiercely and Rey felt it—like the waiting was finally, finally over.  And it was the beginning of the rest of her life.

 

~*~

 

The next summer, they were married in Devonshire.  Poe knew that Rey loved the ocean, but had rarely seen it.  (He remembered keenly the glee on her face the first time they’d taken the ferry across the Channel.)  It was a small affair with just their dearest friends and his father.  They spent a week in Italy eating delicious food and taking in the sites.  When they got back, there was a larger reception at the Rose and Crown for all of their friends, co-workers, and the little town that housed her pub.  There was dancing and wine and music (Poe even played a little).  And at the end of it all, he got to curl up next to his wife.

It was ridiculously hard that first year.  Rey split more of the duties of running the pub with Chewie, but they still spent more days apart than they did together.  And a small fortune on gas driving back and forth.

The house they gave him was too big for just him.  It dwarfed his couch and TV and desk and few boxes of belongings.  He spent a lot of time with a pilot from his new squadron, Snap.  He made friends as he always did, but he missed her.  It was almost a relief when the six month deployment came up.  Something besides coordinated their schedules to occupy his thoughts.

“Hey, did you get my package yet?”  Rey asked as they video-chatted one evening about halfway through the deployment.  It was a large, loud tent—air conditioned, thankfully, but still without much privacy.

“Yep,”  he said, holding up the small box wrapped in brown paper.  “I like how you put ‘do not open without me, on pain of death’ on there.  Must be real special.”

She chuckled as he shook the little box, but nothing jingled back.  “Remember that night before you left?”

“Of course.”  He gave her a sly smile and a wink.  “Can I open it now?  Wait—should I open it?  There’s not a lot of privacy here if it’s, you know… ‘special’.”

Again, she laughed and shifted slightly in her seat.  “It’s nothing like that, I just wanted to see your reaction when you open it.”

His fingers tore into the brown paper and tossed it off to the side.  He pulled the top off of the box and pushed aside the tissue paper covering a small cloth item.  Poe gasped, eyes wide as he pulled it out and held it in his hands.

“What’s it say!”  she practically squealed, her hands clapping.  “Put it down though, I want to see your face!”

“’My daddy is a fighter pilot.’”  He let the infant onesie with the blocky lettering droop so he could look at his wife, glowing like a brilliant star on her side of the screen.  Let her see the shock and the joy and the _I can_ _’t fucking wait to get home_ on his face.  “I love you, sweetheart.  Daddy?  Papá?  This is… wow.”

And all of a sudden, it hit him like a truck.  Poe jumped up from his chair and started shouting around him.  “SNAP!  BASTIAN!  PAVA!”  he hollered for his pilots on their own video calls with loved ones.  “I’M GONNA BE A DAD!”  He lifted his arms and yelled for the entire tent to hear.

There were cheers and claps and a few “sit down Dameron, I’m talking to _my_ kids.”

When he sat back down, he noticed that though she was still smiling, Rey had sad, anxious sort of look on her face.  Likely wondering how they’d manage to raise a kid while basically living apart.  “Hey, Rey, my time is almost up, but don’t you worry.  We’re gonna figure this out, okay?  I love you.”

“I know,”  she said quietly, holding back the tears.  She kissed her fingers and pressed them against the camera before it blinked out.

 

~*~

 

It was an intervention, at least, that’s what it felt like when Finn and Rose sat her down one afternoon.  Well, she had to sit down.  This child was pressing so hard on her bladder, sitting down managed to shift it just enough so she didn’t constantly feel like she needed to pee.

“I got a job!”  Rose announced first, though they both looked like they were planning an ambush so that couldn’t have been the only news.

Nevertheless, Rey was excited for her friend.  “That’s wonderful!  Is it local?  What are you doing?”

“It’s a private airfield, mostly small aircraft, some local crop dusters.  Not a whole lot of hours, but—”

“But it’s one of those fancy ones that caters to celebrities and rich folk on holiday,”  Finn interjected excitedly.  “Less hours, but more money than she was making as an F-15 maintainer, that’s for sure!”

“And you get to stay here!”  Rey laughed and hugged her friend.  “That’s wonderful, Rose!  Congratulations!”

“Finn’s got some news, too!”  She said, taking a quick drink from her glass.

Finn rolled his shoulders and grinned through gritted teeth, but dove right into the topic they were apparently nervous to broach.  “We want to go into business together.”

“Oh, that sounds lovely!”  Rey said.  “What sort of business?”

“No, Rey, I mean, we want to go into business with you.  Buy a stake in the Rose and Crown.”

“What?  Really?  You want to work at a pub?  Aren’t you going to school?”

“Finn’s actually been taking some culinary classes with his business classes, and he’s not a bad cook,”  Rose said.  “We know the reason you’re hesitant to leave is because Chewie’s great at running the bar and managing the place, just not…”

“His food is not good, Rey,”  Finn said bluntly.  “It’s like eating a tire covered in sriracha sauce.”

“And we had some ideas, too, about renting out some of the rooms upstairs like a real inn again.  We’ve been looking into the sort of adjustments that would need to be done for those types of permits.”  From seemingly nowhere, Rose pulled out a folder with fancy graphs and tables and price points for Rey to look at.  Even pictures of new furniture that would fit with the current motif of the pub.  Finn looked especially excited when she flipped to the picture of a large flat-screen TV and blokes gathered around watching football.

“You two really put a lot of thought into this, haven’t you?”

“Rey,”  Finn said taking her hand.  “You and Poe deserve to be together—like in the same house, sleeping in the same bed.  And we’re not just offering because we’re friends, it’s something Rose and I want to do together.  It’s just the added bonus that we’re helping you out.”

“You’re still the owner,”  Rose assured her.  “You still have final say on any decisions.”

Rey took a slow breath as she looked between the two faces of her friends.  Then, she glanced behind them at Chewie who had stopped watching football to listen in on their conversation.  When the older man nodded, his long grey-brown shaggy hair shaking from side to side, she knew.

“Yeah.  This place—it was always a family pub.  And you all are my family.  Let’s do it.”

When Poe came home after his six months away, he hugged Finn tighter than any of them.  Though they’d all had a hand in this plan, Finn managed to end up with most of the credit.  They got all the documents in order to share ownership of the Rose and Crown, and a week later were loading the last of Rey’s belongings into the moving van.  Bee’s carrier was placed carefully in between them on the drive up to Lakenheath.

“It’s okay,”  she said, laughing at Poe as he bent slightly to try and pick her up.  “Please don’t throw out your back trying to carry me across the threshold.”

Instead, he wrapped his arm around her waist and lifted her slightly to hop through the doorway.  Seven months along and looking every bit of it.  He laughed and kissed her and said,  “I have something to show you.  I put it together last week.”

He made her close her eyes and led her through the house to a room in the back.  When she opened them, she gasped and laughed and nearly cried.  The room was painted a pale green with grey accents.  There was a small, white bassinet with a blanket with an elephant on it hanging off the side.  There was a small dresser and changing table with stacks of diapers and all sorts of other baby items ready to go.  There was even a gliding chair next to a table stacked with children’s books.

“Wow, Poe, this is… this is perfect.”

“Welcome home,”  he said as he pressed a kiss to he temple and rubbed his hand across her stomach.

 

Little Luke was born in the spring.  Loud lungs and proud parents.  Rey still took regular trips down to the Rose and Crown, but it was in very good hands.  Finn made her traditional recipes along with his own.  They’d turned four of the upstairs rooms into a bed and breakfast and were booked solid through the summer.  The village even changed a bit while Rey was away.  A shop had opened up.

“A real shop!  Not just the post office!”  Rey told Poe excitedly after Rose had given her the news.

Part of the old farm was sold and a developer built several new row houses and a playground.  Her sleepy little town was starting to wake up.  Part of her was very proud, but another part was sad that she was missing it.  Rey was so happy to be with Poe and Luke and the new friends they’d made, but it seemed no matter where she was, she was always missing something.  She had the most important things though, and that’s what mattered.

 

~*~

 

When Luke was nearly three and hell on two legs, Poe faced a rather difficult decision.  They were consolidating and moving squadrons around.  It was about time for his assignment at Lakenheath to be over anyway, and it seemed it was really time to leave this time.  There were no pilot positions open for him after this, not here anyway.

There was a command position in the Pacific, or a Pentagon subject matter expert desk job.  Neither were what he wanted.  Though he was still in peak physical shape, his eyes were as keen as ever, he was getting too old to be that fighter jockey.  They wanted his mind more than the rest of him these days.  But his heart, his heart was here.  He couldn’t take her away from here.  His father had been over six times already, the most he had ever traveled in his life.  Kept joking about how he was going to sell the farm and move out here permanently.

“I have an idea,”  Rey said at dinner one night as she tried to get a piece of chicken into Luke’s mouth.  They had been vaguely discussing the future.  Poe mostly complained about how he didn’t want to sit at a desk and read reports and offer advice to politicians who wouldn’t listen.

“What’s that?”

“Kenobi’s sheep farm, in the 40’s they had that factory that manufactured bullets, but they also had an emergency landing strip for bombers.  He’s selling it all off now in parcels.  What if we bought the piece that has the landing strip?  Had a little business for hobbyists?”

Poe paused eating and looked over the table at her.  That was an interesting proposal.  The gears turned his head trying to figure out what exactly that would take.  “Buy a couple used prop planes and fix ‘em up.”

“You know Rose would love that.  There’s never anything wrong with those fancy Cessnas she has to work on.”

“That’s… it’s gonna be expensive.”

Rey smiled and gave him her own sly wink.  “You just let me worry about that, baby.”

Poe chuckled and shook his head.  “Finally find that buried treasure?”

“Something like that.  I told you I sold all that stuff Plutt had—that was basically digging for buried treasure.”

“I love you, you know that?”

“Yep, I do.”

 

In front of the sign that declared “Dameron Aero Club,” stood a veritable gaggle of people.  There was Poe, of course, Rey, with a baby girl sporting pigtails propped on her hip.  Little Luke was chasing a slightly smaller toddler around.  Finn and Rose, who was trying to rescue the child.  Chewie was hugging Han Solo as his wife, General Organa, had finally gotten him off the no-fly list for this event.  Their son, Ben, also came, though he looked less than amused by the shenanigans of what was now his extended family.  Bee the cat weaved in between the legs of all the interesting people.  Kes, Poe’s father, had flown in again, and no one was sure if he had a return ticket this time.  Old Man Kenobi was there, too, and mighty impressed with the fresh state of what used to be his property.  The once overgrown landing strip had been cleared and a new coat of paint was on the old metal hangar.

A photographer was shouting at them to stand together and stop moving so he could take the picture already.

Poe stuck his hand out as Luke ran by again and swept him up into his arms, depositing the boy on his shoulder.

“All right everyone!”  Rey shouted.  “This one’s going on the wall so everyone has to smile!”

Poe wrapped his arm around her and pulled her in close.  The four Damerons were in the middle of the photo next to the sign declaring their name.  Around them were their friends, their family.  Ahead of them: forever.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who has been reading and leaving absolutely amazing comments! This story was such a joy to write! I lived in England for 3 amazing years in a tiny village called Ashbury that has one pub (the Rose and Crown), a post office, and a primary school. Though it went through a bit of a growth spurt after I left and now has a village shop, new houses, and a gliding club! It was so awesome to write about it in this setting and share my memories of it with all of you.
> 
> Thank you to sugarspiceandcursewords and chronicallyowlish for reading over chapter one when I was just starting out and unconvinced that this story was worth anything. <3 <3 <3

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [tumblr](http://rinskiroo.tumblr.com/).


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